To begin with a short introduction, Theyyam is a ritual performed in the temples of north Kerala, in the districts of Kannur and Kasargod. The deity of the temple is believed to occupy the elaborately dressed performer, and speak through him during the performance.
Getting the artist ready for the performance is a long process in itself. People arrive early to see the Theyyam being dressed.
It can take a couple of hours just to get the performer ready.
The last stages of dressing is accompanied with high paced music from the drums. The instrument in the picture is called ‘chanDe’ in Kannada, also used in Yakshagana performances. Anyone knows the Malayalam name?
The complex attire with multiple stages of clothing and ornaments requires help from many assistants.
One of the boys who assists the Theyyam through the performances looks at the artist and smiles after completing the decorations.
In full glory!
Perfecting raudra rasa? The artist looks at himself in the mirror. The kumkum(red powder) added around the lips at the last moment adds to the mood remarkably.
During the performance..
On a fine sunny morning, I took a local bus from Kanyakumari and arrived at the leafy environs of Padmanabhapuram Palace. The area around the palace is thickly covered with coconut groves on all sides, and sunlight hardly reaches the ground except where the landscapes are interrupted by tarmac.
The entrance to the palace is predictably surrounded by eateries and souvenir shops. Buying keepsakes is not something I am used to, but nevertheless, ingenious use of coconut shells to create monkeys and Ganeshas succeeded to garner my attention. A short inspection of the surroundings, and I zeroed in on an ancient looking eatery for breakfast.
The dosa at the breakfast place, served with a red chutney with plenty of coconut(do they ever make anything without coconuts in these parts?) was delicious enough for me to go for a second helping. And I was fed with another dose of coconut by a tender coconut vendor at the doors of the palace.
The palace dates back by 400 years, when it was built by the renowned Travancore king Marthanda Varma. But its glory days lasted less than a century, as his successor Dharma Raja decided to move his capital to Thiruvananthapuram. Padmanabhapuram to Thiruvananthapuram? I think Travancore kings loved long names!
The first sight of the palace is unfortunately the least impressive. Soon after I walked through the entrance, I was beginning to doubt if the trip was worth the effort.
The first hall – a courtyard where the king met his visitors – has been praised to no end by palace guides on location as well as the guidebooks, but doesn’t leave a big impression. A lamp, a chair supposedly gifted by a Chinese visitor and a plain stone bed hardly make a mark.
But proceeding further, impressions of the palace change as quickly as it was built up. The mantrasala – the discussion chamber of courtiers has an impressive display of light and shade created by wooden window grills. The colorful windows have placeholders to store perfumes that spread in the room when the wind blows in. The dark and hard flooring of the room and rest of the palace have a superb finish that almost match marbles in their finesse.
The palace has an army of employees serving as tour-guides, whose services are included in the entry fee. A few years ago, a guide would escort each group of visitors through the palace and explain it all from beginning to end. That meant, in days when there are lot of visitors, people had to be rushed through the palace so that everyone can be attended to, and leaving most tourists unhappy. The Kerala archeological department worked on an ingenious solution to the problem: now they have placed two guides in every section of the palace, filling the palace with guides who stay put in their location and brief the tourists. Each section of the palace has clearly marked directions aiding the visitors to find their way through the maze of halls and rooms in the palace.
Walking further from Mantrasala, the arrow marks lead me to the long dining hall where Brahmins once dined in hundreds, thanks to the benevolent king. Huge jars and cauldrons stored at a corner of the hall tell the story of food that was probably cooked in tonnes.
First floor of the dining hall gives excellent view of sections of the palace towering with maroon colored tiled roof, sloping steeply. Walking down from here to a pooja hall called ‘mother palace’, I am once again impressed with ornate carvings of wood, smooth flooring and airy windows with wooden bars. A pillar with intricate woodwork charms me with its carvings of plantains and floral patterns.
Further ahead is Upparika Mahal – the four-storied tower that served as the king’s quarters. A narrow staircase leads up to the king’s bed room in second floor. Further up is a room with frescoes that is out of bounds to visitors. Kerala Archeological Department has closed this room to help preserve the paintings, but how-ever, tourists are always told that the rooms are under renovation. A few poor quality copies are kept in the palace museum, but they are barely good enough to indicate that the originals are excellent paintings, and leave you with a longing to see them.
I pass from here to the airy women’s quarters, and then to the long corridors of guest-rooms that now host some beautiful old paintings of the life and times of Marthanda Varma. The paintings – including coronation of the king, a plot to kill his majesty, war scenes – are well preserved, even when the brand new tiny wooden labels under the paintings have already fallen off!
Just besides the guest-rooms is a green open area with lush grass and tall coconut trees, and a pond at a corner of the palace. I spent a long time standing in a balcony overlooking the pond, observing the fish in the water and a cormorant feeding on them(Here is a separate story on the pond).
The signs helping visitors to find their directions lead me from here to Navarathri Mantapa and Saraswati Temple. These are carved from stone, a significant detour from the wooden structures in rest of the palace. The Mantapa, the place for performances in the palace, is adorned with carved pillars and a floor that is polished well enough to create reflections.
I had almost lost track of time and was engrossed in the impressiveness of the palace. I realized having spent many hours inside only when the signs leading out of the Mantapa took me back to the entrance, indicating end of my trip. Hunger pangs then lead me out of the palace, and further down the road for yet another helping of the delicious dosa.
Padmanabhapuram Information
Visit to the palace is best done as a day-trip from either Kanyakumari or Trivendrum.
How to reach: To get to the palace, take a Trivendrum bound bus from Kanyakumari(or the other way), and get down at Thuckalay town. You can hire an auto-rickshaw from Thuckalay to the palace, which is 3km away.
Nearest major train stations are at Trivendrum and Nagercoil, and the nearest airport is at Trivendrum.
On one of my gallivanting trips in the peninsula, I was wandering the lenght of Padmanabhapuram Palace in TamilNadu-Karala border and came across a small pond trapped between the palace walls on three sides and lush greenery on the fourth. Its clear waters, spread of lush and tender grass around it, its beautiful setup at the edge of a coconut grove and views of Travancore Hills far away in the east together pulled me towards the pond. Walking around the pond, I found a balcony that opened straight above its waters, and spent a long time indulging in the placid atmosphere.
Standing on the balcony, I could see deep into the pond’s clear and transparent-greenish water. It was live with fish of many sizes and variety. There were big black ones with half a feet long plump body that swam lazily in a corner. And a smaller kind stayed together and moved in a school of few hundreds, staying close to the surface. A Little Cormorant dominated the tank, policing the place from end to end in a nonchalant manner and occasionally diving in and coming out with something in his beak.
When the cormorant dived, I could still see him inside the water. His legs moved back and forth quickly and his neck straightened like a spear to aid swift motion. I could see all that he did when he dived in – the fish that he chased, the ones he managed to catch and the ones he had to let go. He made a quick dive to replenish himself just after I arrived, surfaced immediately, flapped his wings and flew into a rock surface where he settled down comfortably.
He seemed to be planning a long hour of leisure on the rock and in no hurry to get back to the water. He knew that the fish in the pond are going nowhere, and he can consume them one by one at his own pace. He perched comfortably on the rock and spread his wings wide open to let them dry in the sun. Cormorants lack oil secreting that help most waterbirds to keep their wings dry. They have to resort to conventional way to dry them – by getting out of the water and spreading them in the sun. After a good session of swimming, they take a clumsy flight to the bank by flapping their dripping wings, spread them wide open for some time for drying in the sun before flying away.
Life must be good if you are a cormorant in these parts. He kept his own leisurely schedule perched on the rock and seemed to have nothing to bother about. I stood still in the balcony watching him, hoping that he gets back to water soon to work on the remaining fish in the pond, filling himself up by making good use of a time when he is having all the pond for himself. But he was relaxed and took it easy, preening his wet wings and inspecting the pond that he seemed to own.
He must have spent a good fifteen minutes making fashion statements in preening and drying his wings. Just when I was getting impatient and looking forward to some action from him, he jumped into water and started scanning the pond for lunch. I was excited and looked forward to some underwater fish chase and fast action sequences. But to my disappointment, he headed straight to the area covered with weeds and disappeared under them.
He would spend a lot of time under water each time he went into weeds, leaving me in anticipation and keeping me guessing about where is he going to resurface next. He always came out with something tiny in his mouth and would swallow it contentedly after coming back up. What he had in his beak was too small for me to see with bare eyes, but whatever it was, he seemed to be finding a lot of it under the weeds, as he made frequent dives and never came back empty.
This went on for a long time; he had an appetite that wasn’t going to be satiated easily. He continued his routine, relishing in his find under the weeds. There definitely seemed to be an endless supply of food somewhere down there. Besides what he was eating, he did not even bother to look at the school of small fish that moved around the pond in a slothful manner. For such good supply of food, it was surprising that he had no competition and had the entire pond all for himself. It must be a lavish life, being a cormorant.
I did not have to wait for a long to figure why he donned the whole pond by himself. In a few minutes, another one of his fellow beings flew in, perched on the roof of the palace and surveyed the pond to check if it is habitable for him. He seemed to like the place; after lingering for a moment on the roof, he decided to fly into the pond. What happened next was something I wasn’t ready for. He dived into water, but was met mid air by the our old fellow who was unwilling to share his abode. The fight and the pandemonium that ensued next hardly lasted a second. It was a swift encounter as the birds quacked and collided with each other, trying to push each other with their beaks. The intruder retreated immediately, leaving the pond with its rightful owner and allowing peace to prevail. The mystery of his dominance was thus resolved.
Another fifteen minutes of order remained as our old cormorant continued to have good time diving down the weeds and taking mouthfuls. Exploring for more, he swam into a bunch of weeds right below my balcony, giving me closer and clear views of his shining dark back. This time when he dived, I could see a little of what was happening among the weeds. He disturbed a school of very tiny, barely visible fish that haunted the weeds and picked them one by one at each dive. Another mystery was resolved.
There wasn’t a moment of dullness at the pond. Soon he had enough of the tiny fish and scoured the pond for more, stumbling on the school of fish swimming tardily in the opposite corner. There was a sudden infusion of life in the pond. The school sprung into action and swam away quickly, chased by the fast moving cormorant. It split into two groups in the pandemonium and the action that ensued lasted no more than a second or two. The cormorant got closer to the less lucky of the two groups and pounced on them. Next moment it was all over. Our bird was back on the surface floating easily as he always did, a trophy of victory locked in his beak. After all that fast drama, once again peace prevailed in the tank and life continued as usual: the school had regrouped, cormorant returned to its usual uneventful dives. It looked as if nothing had happened in the last minute.
The amount of complexity packed by nature in such a small region amazes me. The tiny fish probably depend on the weeds to survive, and the bigger fish are likely to survive on the smaller ones. The cormorant gobbles up the fish and population of all life is kept in control. The water itself is recycled and replenished to support all this life by vaporization and precipitation. And the complexity is carefully planned to ensure that the system never breaks. The cormorant keeps rivals at bay, ensuring sustenance of aquatic population. And yet it seems so simple and beautiful to someone seeing it from outside the system.